All NICU entrants had to sterilize their hands at a special washing station to prevent infection. There was a bathroom right next door to the station and I used it every time I visited because I was so terribly nervous about finding out the baby’s status that I always ended up having to take a giant shit. Then I would worry that it was inappropriate to take a shit in a NICU. I would wash my hands compulsively afterward but still worry that I hadn’t gotten all of the filth off, that I was spreading fecal matter all over the place and giving every infant in the unit meningitis with my poopy hands.
The NICU was divided into sections based upon the severity of each infant’s condition. The ones at the back were high-risk babies that needed careful monitoring, my son among the unfortunates. As I walked to the back of the unit, I could always see the other babies along the way. Some weighed as little as a single pound. It seemed unfathomable to me that anything that small could grow at all, that it could add fat and muscle and become something other than a tiny, helpless little creature. Some of the babies were housed in bassinets lined with foil that had heat lamps shining on them at all times, like burgers set out for pickup in a T.G.I. Friday’s kitchen. Some were being rocked gently and fed by traumatized mothers still wearing their hospital gowns. You could hear the babies crying, some of them emitting a high-pitched “neuro-cry” that was a clear signal that their brains had been compromised.
I tried not to stare at the other children because it seemed like I was being intrusive, but I couldn’t help it. I would see doctors and nurses talk to other parents in hushed tones and wonder what was wrong with their children. The majority of babies were housed in alcoves, with only a curtain surrounding them for privacy. A handful of babies got actual private rooms. I wondered if you got a room because your baby was certain to pass away. All of the joy and anticipation you could feel in the main waiting area of the maternity ward was missing here. Once inside the NICU, there was nothing but angst. You knew that every second in this place, someone was holding his or her breath. I wondered how many couples walked out of the NICU every year empty-handed.
After the baby’s surgery, I walked back to his isolette with my wife so that I could stare at him. The entire incubator was covered with a fitted giraffe blanket, to give parents a sense that this was a warm and cute place, not the terrifying place we all knew it to be. There was a flap at the top of the blanket that I could unsnap and open to look down at the baby, as if I were staring at fish underneath a glass bottom boat. I pulled the flap open and saw my son lying on a biliblanket, a blanket that lit up with changing colors to help lower the baby’s bilirubin levels (high levels of bilirubin cause jaundice). It would shift from green to yellow to red every few moments, as if my son were onstage at a rock concert.
“Should we take a picture of him?” I asked my wife.
She shook her head and began to cry. “I don’t want to remember any of this.”
There were tubes and wires sprouting out from all over his body. There were three wires running from his foot that went directly to a monitor that displayed his heart rate, his blood pressure, and the oxygen levels in his blood. Whenever the vitals got too high or too low, the monitor would beep like a smoke alarm and the nurses would come over to make sure the child wasn’t dying. Sometimes a baby will forget to breathe and his heart rate will plunge down to virtually nothing before the nurse gives him a nudge and he suddenly remembers, “Oh, hey! OXYGEN.” This is called bradycardia, or a “brady” for short. Our son bradyed a lot. It was fucking scary as hell.
All over the NICU, something was always beeping. If not our son’s monitor, then someone else’s IV. The nurses would rush to another alcove and I would find myself grateful there was a baby sicker than my own. I hated myself for thinking that. I had a hard time recognizing which beep was coming from where. Every beep was a chance to worry. The beeps rained down twenty-four hours a day, from all directions. The nurses had clearly gotten used to them. I never did. A handful of unlucky parents had to take the monitors home with them when their children were discharged, to keep tabs on their vital signs. Those home monitors often malfunctioned, beeping all night long.